The last excitement of the weekend was the arrival on Sunday of our friend John Patton from Santa Barbara. John, husband of Kathy Patton (she is famous for introducing me to Rancho Gordo), came for a two-day stay (sadly without Kathy who is in Carmel working the PGA). John came down to go to the Dodger game with Alan. Of course we were thrilled that we got John for a visit and we welcome him any day with or without his lovely, wonderful wife – but I missed Kathy. I was sorely and embarrassingly unprepared for John’s visit. First of all, there was barely any gin which is John’s best drink. I knew I had a bottle – in fact as it turned out, I had two bottles both of them had less than ¼” of gin left which I of course didn’t discover until after the 20-mile bike ride and precisely at cocktail hour (no olives either). Who do you think did that? Not to malign anyone but it does seem like youthful behavior doesn’t it? (A note would have been nice kids…. ☺) Second, I didn’t have any bread for bruschetta so I had to use the sourdough sandwich bread, cut-up (kind of embarrassing because John definitely knows the difference). Third, I didn’t have the right kind of rice to eat with our tamale dinner and I ended up making very dark colored wild rice to eat with our Mexican meal (can you believe it? I mean seriously….. What kind of host am I?). Fourth, I served bruschetta as an appetizer for a Mexican meal (I didn’t even think about it at the time – I should have just put out chips and salsa for goodness sakes)…. Fifth and finally, we started talking about home improvement projects and then John wanted to fix everything while he was here – big and small projects. In fact, as I write this post, John is at the hardware store buying screws big enough to fit the kitchen cabinet door that is falling off the hinges… . !! Oh goodness…
So we fed John faux bruschetta with the remaining roasted cherry tomatoes (recipe previously posted) and then I made a garbanzo/avocado/lime topping as well (recipe follows) – at least that has ingredients that are used in Mexican cooking. And for dinner we had some of the remaining tamales that I made last week, with guacachile of course (recipe previously posted), rice (the wild rice…. Ugh) and black beans and arugula salad. The food was fine it’s just that the organization and combination was ridiculous. I’ll do better next time John – promise….
Avocado and Garbanzo Bruschetta
Ingredients:
12 ounces fresh cooked garbanzo beans, or cooked dried garbanzos or 1 can organic garbanzo beans, drained and washed
1 large ripe avocado
1 lime
A little excellent olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Put the garbanzos in a bowl with the avocado and smash all up with a potato masher or a fork. Stir in a little of your best olive oil. Squeeze in lime juice – a lot. Add salt and pepper. Smash the concoction on the bruschetta.
Top with a cilantro leaf.
This also makes a delicious sandwich spread.
